(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique to configure a device driver of an image processing device.
(2) Description of the Related Art
To control a printer from a terminal device, it is necessary to install a printer driver in the terminal device. By starting up a configuration dialog box for the printer driver and inputting printing conditions (values) from the configuration dialog box, the user can print out a document or the like, which is stored in the terminal device, in a desired format.
Regarding such a printer driver, there is a technique for using print conditions customized by the user as values to be displayed when the configuration dialog box is started up. In this technique, the terminal device stores a driver configuration file in the memory thereof, and reads the file before printing out the document to configure the printer driver. Accordingly, once the user customizes the conditions to suit preferences of the user, the conditions will be reflected on the configuration dialog box from the next printing. As a result, the technique lightens the workload of the user, because it becomes unnecessary for the user to input all the printing conditions every time.
However, to use a new printer that is newly connected to the terminal device, the user has to install another printer driver, which supports the new printer, in the terminal device. Default values have been preset for the newly installed printer driver. Therefore, the user has to input the printing conditions again for the new driver. This is a problem from the viewpoint of convenience of the user.